Borgs x China
As every nerd, I’ve always been a Star Trek fan, all its franchises, original Star Trek, TNG, DS9, Voyager, minus Discovery. Every franchise have special features, contemporary to their times!
One of the most interesting things and it says a lot about the trek universe are the enemies. Original Star Trek, Kirk, Spock, Bones, their main enemy during the series was the Klingon Empire. Based in the Soviet Union. There was a cold war between the Federation and the Empire. The Klingons were rustic, suspicious, but efficient and dangerous. An empire maintained by strong hand; it was a matter of time its collapse.
Another far more sophisticated enemy, appears in all franchises were the Romulans. Like the same genetics as Vulcans, producers were inspired by the Roman Republic, which evolves into a very advanced militarized society with interstellar capabilities. Always in friction with the Federation. There were also the Cardassians, another very powerful enemy, with some inspiration in ancient Egypt. They exercised iron rule over other civilizations!
But by far, the most dangerous and powerful of all are the Borg.
Highly developed cybernetic beings, called drones. Drones are other alien species that are forcibly assimilated through injected nano-probes. The species add their knowledge in the collective mind, the Hive, their individuality is destroyed. Borgs don’t just create assimilate. Even so, they are more and more advanced due to the assimilated races. They are always expanding. The pursuit of perfection.
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
They are totally the opposite of free will and individuality. It doesn’t take much imagination to draw a parallel between the Borg and China today.
China invests to be the global powerhouse in AI as well as advanced genetics. As The Atlantic magazine states: “The emergence of an AI-powered authoritarian bloc led by China could warp the geopolitics of this century. It could prevent billions of people, across large swaths of the globe, from ever securing any measure of political freedom. “
China aims to become the world’s preeminent superpower and restore global order in the 21st century. This access to the global economy requires the sacrifice of intellectual property to Beijing, as well as accepting its political and economic dictates.
Liu Cixin is a Sci-fi writer. His best-known work in the West is The Three-Body Problem, which is part of a series. As Vilma Gryzinski, wrote:
“The writer is venerated in China — and seen as an important piece in the great geopolitical chess, with the potential for his work to become the greatest soft power feat of the superpower.
Liu Cixin is not an easy writer to read and has no sympathetic political positions in the West. In a report in the New Yorker magazine, he said that democracy is not an adequate system for China and that he would run out of the country if it saw it implanted.
In the first book of the series, a ruler from Trisolaris, where the invasion of the Earth is taking place, refers to a civilization that had “free and democratic societies and that left rich cultural legacies”.
“We know almost nothing about it. Most of the details have been sealed and forbidden to be seen”. Except that “this type of civilization was the weakest and the shortest-lived” “
In other words, he finds the Western system inefficient!
The Klingons imploded. The Borgs seem invincible, in one way or another, the federation resists. But with much sacrifice!